Director Ric Roman Waugh has made a name for himself in stunt-heavy action films, including 2019's Angel Has Fallen starring Gerard Butler. Waugh teams up with Butler again for Greenland, but while the action and drama is as big as ever, the story is more grounded, focusing on a normal family caught up in extraordinary circumstances. The movie centers on the harrowing journey of the Garritys, a family of three, who are doing everything they can to get to a safe haven in Greenland as a world-killer comet, dubbed Clark, bears down on Earth. Waugh stages elaborate set pieces, like the Garritys fleeing in their car as debris from the comet rains down on a packed highway full of desperate people, while also examining the human reaction to the coming end of the world.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, Waugh discussed what appealed to him about Greenland, its surprising parallels to people's behavior during the real-world crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and making an action movie that doesn't feature a larger than life action hero.
CBR: What made you want to direct Greenland?
Ric Roman Waugh: The reason I wanted to do this movie is I love stories about morality and intimacy and also about the gray of humanity. If you’ve seen my movies, they're always delving into the moral ambiguity of things. And when I read the script, I realized it was never about the comet, it was about humanity itself told through the story of this family. And I love that, that you got an inside-out point of view the way that maybe A Quiet Place has gone down or Children Of Men, versus just about the spectacle where you're watching it on screen. I love the idea that you get to participate with the Garritys through this journey and experience what an extinction event would be like, so you get the fun, big, visceral ride of it, which we love to go to the movies for, but it's hung on a story that's personal and feels relatable to us.
And speaking of relatable, so many things in this film resemble our current reality: people looting supermarkets and people questioning the immigrant status of Gerard Butler's character. Were you aware of those parallels when you were making the movie?
No. It's such a piece of irony what we're going through right now with COVID, because when we shot Greenland, edited Greenland, tested Greenland, locked Greenland, there was never anything known as COVID. And so suddenly you're in the sense before that, dealing with what you would think are hypothetical situations. Of course, an extinction event has still only happened once in history, thank God, but you're hanging on what would happen if somebody realized the end of the world was coming, and then suddenly you start to see these certain things translate into what's going on with the pandemic. Yeah, it was a very surreal experience.
I remember watching the movie with an audience during the test, and then I remember watching the movie on the mix stage after we were very much in the middle of COVID. In fact, we were on the mix stage when all of California shut down and we literally had to stop. But I never forget watching the movie and it was a completely different experience for me because I started realizing how relatable it was to my own life during this pandemic and other people’s.
You had a long career in stunts before you jumped into directing. And there are stunts in Greenland but it’s also a very grounded story. Were you excited about making a movie that doesn't feature a big action hero, and focuses on more of an average family?
Yeah, I think Gerard Butler and I both were into that. We just came off of Angel Has Fallen together, and it was really fun to put my stamp on the Has Fallen franchise with him. But again, he's playing a person, Mike Banning, who is larger than life. And when I read Greenland, I knew he was the perfect person for this because, one, I love how fearless he is about showing his own vulnerabilities and his sensitivities as a man, and understanding that masculinity is well rounded, it's not somebody that's impervious to pain and 10 feet tall and bulletproof and has no flaws. We loved that this man was dealing with real issues and a sense of atonement, a sense of redemption to his own marriage and his own failures as a man and things that he was coming to terms with. I love the relatability of that. I felt like it would be a great turn to see him be the mortal person that has no special skill set, that is flawed like all of us, and yet, as in this culture that we live in today, trying to find redemption and forgiveness.
And I love the story of that, that the event of this, of [the Comet] Clark and this extinction event, it has a way of showing us as a society that we can knock the rust off of one another and stop worrying about all these differences we have and start remembering how much we need each other, and that all we really want to be in life is to love someone and to [be loved] back. And I love that. I love that message of this at the core center of it.
Directed by Ric Roman Waugh and starring Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, Roger Dale Floyd and Scott Glenn, Greenland premieres on premium video on demand on Friday, Dec. 18.